Chapter 26: Spelunking Asshole Caverns

Mato's footsteps muffle while Izzy's and mine echo into the depths of the cave.

Isabella, still a kid, pops her lips to play with the echo.

My [Light] blazes brightly between red and blue, dancing off moisture on the cave walls. It's cold, and I can see my breath ahead of me as we move deeper. Occasionally, we have to duck or even crawl where the stone juts out or the opening squeezes tight. Wherever the cave gets tight, I can see small grooves in the walls, floor, and ceiling where things had been dragged against them, swallowed by the cave like the undulating walls of a throat.

We come to two branching paths, both leading deeper into the dark, both hauntingly claustrophobic. It feels as if the slightest movement would cause the cave to snap shut like the jaws of a trap.

Of course, I know that likely isn’t the case, and know there isn't much I could do about it if it were, and it's not like I have the option to not go after Demarcus. He might be able to handle himself, but these creatures are an unknown quantity and the risks are too high to let him sort it out himself. Worst case scenario I try to make a bomb last second, blast some breathing room into the collapsing cave, then– if I didn't blow myself up– try to reinvent a spell to send a message back to town to get rescued.

All this to say, as I assist Mato's inspection of the two branching paths by controlling my [Light] spell, I've made my peace with potentially dying while spelunking Asshole Caverns.

Izzy has not.

“Gimme your sword.” She whispers, pawing at my pack. I smack her hands away and she continues to ask.

“You've got your stick and magic, all I've got is a guitar, gimme your sword.”

Her eyes dart around the cave, and she huddles close, as if her daring to speak would be the straw that broke the camels back and those creatures would come crawling from the walls.

This is not the time for me to prop up her self esteem and try to convince her that she's fully capable of magic or whatever— especially since I don't really get what bards actually do— so, I just roll my eye and hand the scorched shortsword to her.

“Alright,” Mato whispers, his voice rebounding strangely off the walls. “my best guess is left.”

He begins to walk off but I stop him.

“Woah, woah, hold on. Your best guess? Is Demarcus down this way or is he not?” I snap at him.

“I can't be certain, it's a crapshoot at this point. But, the tunnel to the right is more damp, which means it's more likely to lead to the surface. If Demarcus is being treated like food, he'll be deeper.”

“That's your best guess? We don't have time to backtrack— whatever, we don't have time to argue either.” I relent, and shoo my hands to tell Mato to move forward.

I let Izzy go in front of me, so she'll be sandwiched between Mato and me. Having her back to the caves behind us would probably freak her out, so, medium-sized spoon. Look at me being all considerate and shit.

Mato winds up being right about this tunnel going deeper, and we shortly come to a near 15 foot drop. Grooves in the walls show that the creatures somehow scramble up and down this pit, but that's not something we're capable of.

Mato has us covered, having had the foresight to buy metal pitons in town as part of his supply shopping. He pulls one out, and looks meaningfully between me and Izzy.

“This is going to be loud. Get ready.” He says, pulling out a hammer and finding a crack to hammer the piton securely into.

“Wait. Wait no—”

Izzy's protestations are quickly trumped by the stern and thorough Clang of Mato hammering. I stare down into the pit, but keep the [Light] behind me with the group, so Izzy can see back. It'd be great if I could make two lights.

As Mato finishes hammering, having truly put his back into it to get it done quickly, and begins tying and testing the rope, I have a thought.

Why can't I make two?

I drift the pulsing orb closer to a twitchy Izzy, and she nearly slashes at it as she whiteknuckles the hilt of the sword.

I remember that same light I think of to cast, and my original one winks out, replaced by the newly cast one. I try again, reframing my perspective as I breathe deep and remember every detail of this light, but adjust it with the memory of another. Painfully, I dig through my memories, and none come so strongly as police lights. Not starlight, not sun on a summer day, not even flashlights as the guys and I trespassed somewhere fun.

Regretfully, I simply remember the light as a second squad car arriving at the scene.

I open my eyes and find a second [Light] orb floating above my hands, as well as [Simultaneous Sustain] easing the mana burden, feeling like a cramped muscle slowly relaxing.

I drift the second orb down, and illuminate the bottom of the stone pit, seeing how the light reflects off the walls except for a large opening at its base.

I look left at Mato from where we both are leaning over the pit and say;

“[Rangers] first.”

He takes firm hold of the rope, and leans over the pit, then lifts his feet and squares the rope between them underneath him to control his descent.

He takes one hand off the rope and draws his knife, placing it between his teeth, and quickly slides down the rope. Which is the most piratey thing I think I've ever seen.

He gives the thumbs up from the bottom and I usher Izzy forward. She's noticeably hesitant, so I try to explain.

“You're up next so you're not stuck up here alone. Mato can catch you if you fall.”

She's still taking her sweet time with it, so I say something to get her moving.

“The longer we wait the more likely we'll get caught by anything coming towards the noise.”

That lights a fire under her ass, and she clumsily slides down the rope. When she lands she rhythmically breathes and blows on her very much rope-burned hands.

I take one last look behind, tossing my [Light] orb back.

Seeing nothing, I grab the rope and feel my legs swing out from under me. I fail to slow my fall quite right with my feet; my satchel acted as an unwieldy counterweight and fucked with my balance, so I fall hard the last few feet.

Isabella manages a mocking smirk as Mato helps me back up. I'm glad my suffering and failure can reliably cheer her up.

We look towards the opening, and see how the tunnel winds from here. Unfortunately not a long corridor I can send the [Light] down to scout, but only 10 or 15 feet of stone is visible before it curves and turns.

We walk carefully down the winding tunnel, taking turn after turn until I see Mato and Izzy stop ahead of me immediately after they turn a final corner.

The light from the orb I sent ahead doesn't fill the tunnel as much as it should, so I know they've reached somewhere that the cave opens up more.

I quickly duck around Izzy's guitar to get a peek, and what I see ahead causes my feet to fail the same as theirs.

I see a wide open cavern, a few stalagmites littering the floor, massive chunky roots dangling from the ceiling. 3 tunnels are readily visible and connected to this chamber; one large and deep, one far tighter, and the last 10 feet off the ground.

In the chamber are 3 bodies, one still breathing, two not.

Demarcus stands, breath heaving, lowering his fists as if he was about to fight us. His eyes blink as they adjust to the light, and he shields them with one gauntleted hand against his miraculously still clean hairline. On the floor around him are two nearly identical corpses. Both are the spitting image of Higgy, beaten and bloody. Behind him, set into the floor, I can see my [Light] reflect and refract off of some pool of liquid.

When Demarcus’ eyes adjust, his face beams in a smile.

“O—” he gives a raspy cough.

“Oh thank god it's you, I was expecting more of them.” He says gesturing to the corpses on the floor.

“What are they?” Mato asks.

“I don't know. But they're not human.” Demarcus replies.

I jog over, turning my eye to each of the tunnels and then staring at one of the fake Higgys before I peel it away back to Demarcus.

“It's okay man, I found ya, are you hurt?” I ask him.

“I'm fine. But you guys gotta see this.” He says, waving his hand for us to follow.

I begin to follow, then feel a hand on my shoulder. I look to see Izzy, eyes wide with adrenaline, her whole body activated in fight or flight, and she whispers to me, trembling.

“He's wearing chainmail, right?”

I look back to Demarcus leading Mato towards the pool of liquid. I can still see the chainmail chest beneath the cloth covering, specifically down his arms.

“Yeah, why?”

Isabella puts a shaky finger to her lips, and begins creeping up behind Mato and Demarcus. When she gets close, I finally notice the drawn sword in her hand, which she now pulls back far, the tip pointed straight towards Demarcus’ back.

“Wait!—”

When Izzy's sword thrusts deep into Demarcus’ back, my shout of protest is immediately lost. The sound that smothers my voice comes from the thing that was pretending to be my best friend, and it may well haunt me til the end of my days.

From a single throat comes the voices of hundreds, all screaming in agony. Like the sound of a Rockstar taking the stage if the audience was being tortured. The simultaneous scream of hundreds of souls in pain, reminiscent of what I've heard in school shooting footage. But, it has this uncanny element that kicks some deep and primordial part of human instinct. The ancient memory of the Uncanny Valley recognizes it as almost human. The difference for this scream is that it isn't the din of a crowd, ambient and surrounding you, because each of those hundred voices screams from a single point in front of you, trapped in the throat of some thing.

A second scream cuts into it, this one a battlecry. The scream of tired rage and injustice, the scream of someone who has been forced to fight but never wanted to, so they fight with all they have.

Izzy screams, cutting through the creature's sound and easing the pain screwing our eyes shut. I open my eye to see her screaming with sword held in both hands, and watch as her sword falls like a meteor into the neck of the fake Demarcus.

The scream ends, punctuated by the thunk of a body falling to the floor.

Isabella wrenches the sword from the back of the creature's neck— not sharp or swung hard enough to behead, thankfully. Don't want her having flashbacks— and her breath hitches and shudders with adrenaline.

I just watch, as brown brackish sap-blood leaks from the wounds, and see the corpse of my friend slowly morph and deflate back into the form of that twisted creature we saw above. This one has differences, they're not identical it would seem, and its skull is somehow even more disturbing with skin on it.

Its face is leather pulled too tight over its cancerous skull, like several layers of clingwrap stretched thin over a pineapple— but a pineapple with eyes. Too many eyes, all around the head. And a mouth best left undescribed.

I look back up to Isabella as Mato scans the room.

“How did you know?”

She wipes spit from her mouth before she replies, adrenaline speeding her words.

“Their blood is brown, we saw red blood, which means he should be wounded or at least have some dried blood on him. That, plus, his hair was fine. It should have a chunk burnt off.”

“Oh.” I reply, stupidly.

God damnit I should have realized. He even said he didn't know it was us coming. I remember him saying back in the castle that his skill let him feel wherever I was.

So this is the kinda thing the passphrase is for. I should probably tell them, but the journal said to tell no one. It only works if no one but me would know it. Plus, from the stuff these things were saying in the woods, knowing vaguely what their stolen voices would say, they have to be at least a little telepathic. Maybe they only know what the person they're copying would say. Maybe it's even a skill, can these creatures have classes?

I don't have time to think about it, because Mato realized something the fastest.

Dead doppelgangers turn back into their natural forms.

Were standing between the corpses of two Higgys.

[Heed The Omens].

I hear the snap of his crossbow as Mato fires a bolt into the eye of one of the “dead” Higgys, and I turn to see it convulse before Mato kneels and drives his knife into its skull.

“Cy! The other!” He yells.

I turn to my blind right, and see the other dead Higgy kneeling, jaw unhinged so its entire face opens like a snarling trapdoor uncovering buzzsaws of shifting teeth.

It moves to lunge, and I cast [Tripping Roots] in the hopes that the massive roots on the ceiling can reach down and clothesline it by the neck, but I get no response. Not a denial or a resistance, the spell simply doesn’t work.

Not like it matters, the spell would've taken several seconds to cast anyways, but I was running off instinct there.

The doppelganger lunges, and impacts against me hard. It tackles me to the hard and jagged floor of the cave, and the air gets knocked from my lungs. The [Light] spells I had been concentrating on wink out, and we are plunged into darkness.

The creature sitting atop me suddenly begins tearing into my chest, claws having grown from its fingers in the dark. But, while the impacts have some force behind them and will definitely bruise, the claws are made to slash and rend, and so they fruitlessly glide across my blue coat. I flail to grab the arms attacking me, eventually grabbing them by the wrist and forearm. And yet, the attacks keep coming, despite two arms being firmly in my grip. Those extra vestigial arms aren’t so vestigial it would seem.

I hear the crack and scrape of tinder, and catch glimpses of the horror atop me in flashes of sparks. Fire blooms as Mato lights a torch from his bag and tosses it to the ground, dimly lighting the room.

The light is regained and casting shadows dramatically, leaving the horror atop me— tearing at my chest and barely held in place— falteringly visible. Only seeing the edges of it, flickers of that familiar face torn apart to split open its horrid mouth, is all the more horrifying. The creature is horrifically silent as it tries to kill me.

I make noises as unfinished words are beaten from my chest, trying to get my allies to help. I don’t see her, focused as I am on the not-Higgy abomination atop me, but I see the effect of Izzy slashing down across its back as it screams and tries to turn and face her. I still have it held tight, and it fails to get away, turning back to me. Then, through its unhinged mouth, I see a bolt shoot through the back of its head and ricochet off the stone to the left of my arm. It slumps, not quite dead but getting there, and I feel Izzy stab through its chest and into mine, it doesn’t pierce the coat, but will leave a nasty bruise.

“Augh! Ey, watch it! I’m under here! You better be damn glad my coat is enchanted.” I shout, then push the corpse off of me, grunting painfully as I roll to my knees.

“Not so stupid now is it?” I mock to Izzy, but her eyes are still wide with fear as she breathes a mile a minute and doesn’t peel her gaze off the corpses.

“What?” She asks, glancing back at me.

“Nothing, don’t worry about it. But fuck we still gotta find Demarcus.” I reply.

The three of us look around the room, Mato and Izzy still on edge and looking for threats. I pipe up.

“So, Mato, which tunnel? You’re the tracker here. But please don’t tell me it’s that one.” I say, pointing towards the tunnel 10 or so feet above the floor, set into the wall.

Mato finishes reloading his crossbow, then peers suspiciously around the room. He leans over to grab his torch from where he tossed it onto the floor by a stalagmite to light the room in the absence of my [Light] spells. I stare at the creature’s corpses below us and listen to Izzy’s panicked breathing as Mato retrieves the torch from beside the stalagmite.

The stalagmite bites his hand.

Mato cries out in pain as the stone shifts, unfolding itself, and its kin does the same further away, the other stalagmite seeming to writhe apart like the most disgusting Transformers toy I’ve ever seen.

I curse and punch out a [Magic Missile] into the one latching onto Mato’s arm, wind back for the followup with the other arm, and feel my arm stuck.

I look back, and then up, to see the large roots on the ceiling descending like spiders with their own horrid legs extending like silk. One of them has my right wrist gripped tight by an arm stretched nearly 8 feet long.

“Fucking shapeshifters!”

Is what I would have said, if at that moment the other “root” hadn’t unlatched itself from the ceiling and fell the remaining 15 feet onto my head.

What I say instead is “Fuc—” followed by a meaty clatter.

My body is subsumed by shifting woody flesh. My mouth and nose create a vacuum as I try to breathe. I feel my feet give from under me as my arm is painfully yanked and I claw and kick as I am dragged along the stone floor.

What spells do I have? How the fuck do I deal with this?

Can barely move, can’t punch, no [Magic Missile]. No roots this deep so no tripping.. That leaves [Minor Illusion] or [Firebolt].

A wave of calm comes over me as I hold my breath while my body is dragged. I focus, trying to think of all the skin cells and cloth dust in the air. I can’t see them, but they must be there. I’ve never cast a spell I couldn’t see before, but I begin the process of collecting all the flammable material in the air and condensing it with pure magic.

Hoping, praying that I’ve done it right, I fire the [Firebolt] directly at my face, or at least, whatever is covering it.

I don’t feel the heat through the fleshy insulation, but I feel the thing jerk and spasm atop me. It peels off from where it plugged my nose and was reaching dangerously close to my empty eye socket. I suck in a desperate breath as one of the shapeshifters writhes on the floor in flames; and none too soon, as before the air can even get comfortable in my lungs, the back of my head is grabbed by another arm from the other creature, my shoulders seized by its vestigial arms, and my face thrust towards the ground.

I didn’t think to see what Izzy and Mato were doing, focused as I was on not dying, but I hope it was something productive as I am likely to need their help.

My face is thrust violently past the lip of the pool of water in this cave. My chin smacks against the stone hard, cutting it, before I bounce and feel the cold rush of water around me. I was still mid breath when it shoved me in, and a gasp of pain means that I immediately suck in penny-tasting water and begin drowning. My body forces several coughs beneath the water and my legs kick and flail beneath the creature kneeling atop me and holding my arms and head down. I try to brute force my way from beneath it, but the sheer mass of it, perfectly spread across me to keep me pinned in place, makes my thrashing ineffective. My head hurts. I think I bit my tongue.

As delirium begins to creep in from the brain firing off desperate signals, burning the mast of the ship to try and flag down rescue, I feel something strange, which I hope beyond hope is a hallucination of an oxygen deprived and damaged brain.

Solid, woody leather— warm, far too warm— gently, testingly taps against my lips. My eye shoots open and all I see is dark. Endless and deep dark. I feel that fleshy thing hook itself around my lip and pry it open. This… finger forces my mouth open and I snap my jaw shut, my chest spasming, breathless, as I try to overcome the survival instincts of drowning and keep my mouth closed.

Four more fingers reinforce the first, horrible claws of fingernails wedge in the cracks of my uneven teeth, and I feel another hand flank from above and to the side. The two work in concert, prying my upper and lower jaw apart. I put all the force I can into biting, nearly dislocating my jaw. That penny taste is tainted by a strange taste of chemicals, like an old and expired homeopathic medicine from the 80s. The thing from the deep below me’s blood spreads through the water now filling my mouth.

Two hands hold open my jaws, and in my fading and delirious mind, where only the subconscious and instinctual can hold on, fear is untethered.

I feel fear, true fear.

I am afraid and horrified and terrified and every word I’ve only read for the longest time because now— now I feel a third hand.

Furtive and raw, like the melting flesh of a burning infant or a rotting snake that died after its molt— a tiny, oh so tiny finger pokes my tongue, like it’s scared and discovering, and slowly creeps towards the back of my throat. My dying body still fires its signals and I wretch slightly, causing the baby fingers to flinch back, startled.

After a moment of hesitation, the fingers return to their exploration, brushing against the ridged roof of my mouth, like running your hand against the side of a new car, or the wallpaper of a new bedroom. This horrible and intrusive thing slowly inches towards my throat like it’s exploring its new home, while I slowly die.

Feeling fades, all but the sensation of something creeping closer, so I don’t feel the pressure against my back ease until I am grabbed by the hair and ripped from the water.

The fingers scrape against my teeth on the way out and I am suddenly in open air again.

All higher thought has left me, but my organs and brain stem still function even with low oxygen and I begin puking up water, coughing and sputtering.

I regain a semblance of consciousness after who knows how long, and realize on a delay that someone had been talking to me for several seconds, and that I was thrashing and smacking against them.

Still panicked, but feeling my brain slowly boot up, I turn slightly from my side as my eye blinks and adjusts in the dim torchlight to see the silhouettes of the people around me.

Izzy stands back, biting her nails and staring at me. Mato kneels next to me holding the torch with one hand and holding my shoulder with the other.

Demarcus kneels above me, with such horrible, beloved fear in his eyes for me that is so real, so impossible to fake, that I manage to pull back my instinctual punch just barely in time.

“—! —! —d damnit man, tell me you’re okay!” Demarcus yells.

“H—” I begin, before another coughing fit takes over after the movement of my vocal chords shook loose more water stuck in the folds of my throat.

“Hey D,” I croak. “We came back for ya.”

Demarcus hugs me tight, and I tense until my hand brushes against the burnt chunk of his hair.

***

“So there’s more of them in the water?” Mato asks.

“Yes! It’s full body snatcher up in here! We need to leave. Now.” I reply, drenched, cold, and shivering like a wet rat in winter as Demarcus dabs healing potion onto my chin. I pull Mato’s shawl tighter around my shoulders.

“I could try to kill em by vibrating the water with sound.” Izzy offers. “That’s where the phrase ‘shooting fish in a barrel’ comes from right? Cuz even if you miss, the vibration will still kill them?”

Huh, I didn’t know that.

“Nah, we just gotta get the fuck outta here.” Demarcus says, a little extra force entering his arm as he presses too hard.

“Sorry. But yeah, fuck that. Thankfully, as soon as you’re good to go lil’ buddy we can book.” He says, patting my shoulder.

“I’m good. Just cold. It’s a long way back though. Mato, can you get us back?” I respond.

“No need.” Demarcus waves Mato off with.

He turns back to me and smiles.

“I found it.”